Cleveland 'house of horrors' survivors detail their decade of abuse and how Ariel Castro raped them up to 5 times a day - the only time they were released from their chains

  • Gina DeJesus, now 25, wrote in her memoir about the first time that Castro raped her following her abduction in 2004 in Cleveland, Ohio
  • She recalled: 'I'm crying and bleeding. I've been terrified he would do this. '''We gotta celebrate!' he says... ''That was your first time'''
  • Both Gina and fellow survivor, Amanda Berry, described in their newly-released memoir how Castro raped them 5 times a day
  • It was the only time they were released from chains until the last 2 years of their captivity

Two survivors of Cleveland's 'house of horrors' have revealed in their new memoir how Ariel Castro raped them over and over each day - the only time they had a brief respite from heavy chains which cut their skin and left their bodies aching.

Gina DeJesus described the first time that Castro raped her after she was abducted in Cleveland, Ohio in 2004 at the age of 14, according to the book seen by Daily Mail Online. 

Gina, now 25, recalled: 'He seems angry, like he wants to hurt me as much as he can. I'm screaming and crying and beating him back, but it's useless.

'I'm crying and bleeding. I've been terrified he would do this. ... I want to die. I try to cover myself with my clothes.

'''We gotta celebrate!' he says, standing up and pulling his pants back on. 'That was your first time!'"

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Amanda Berry revealed how she set up a 'school' for her daughter Jocelyn in the one-room where they were held captive by Ariel Castro 
Gina DeJesus revealed in the interview how she tried to run from the home but Ariel Castro sat on her back

Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus (pictured right) in an interview aired on Monday revealed in their new memoir, published last week, how Ariel Castro raped them multiple times a day while they were held captive in his Cleveland home 

Investigation photographs from the Castro home where doors were  bolted over windows - and then the bolts sheared off, keeping the three women captive for a decade

Investigation photographs from the Castro home where doors were  bolted over windows - and then the bolts sheared off, keeping the three women captive for a decade

Ariel Castro's dingy basement at his Cleveland home. He bolted doors across windows to prevent the women's escape and then sheared off the bolts

Ariel Castro's dingy basement at his Cleveland home. He bolted doors across windows to prevent the women's escape and then sheared off the bolts

Amanda Berry gave birth to a daughter Jocelyn in captivity. She tried to shield her daughter from the horrifying reality of their lives and even set up a kindergarten in the room

Amanda Berry gave birth to a daughter Jocelyn in captivity. She tried to shield her daughter from the horrifying reality of their lives and even set up a kindergarten in the room they were held in, pretending to 'walk to school' each morning

Both Gina and fellow survivor, Amanda Berry, said Castro raped them up to five times a day, forcing them to tell him they 'want it, love it' and that he was 'sexy'. 

In one of the diary-like entries in the 300-page book, Amanda described how, a day after she was abducted, Castro forced her to shower with him and then locked her to a pole in the basement with chains around her stomach. It was her 17th birthday. 

He then moved her to an upstairs bedroom and chained her to a radiator, adding zip ties along with the rusty chain.

Castro placed a tall, beige trash can next to the bed so that Amanda could use it as a 'bathroom'.

Her only food was cold McDonald's or Burger King which he brought once a day. She recalled: 'After I finish eating, he tells me to strip, and he does it again.'

She described how he keeps a mannequin with a black wig and a red, fishnet vest.

The teenager initially kept count of the rapes in her diary, writing in an April 27 entry: 'It's Sunday. I've been gone six days. And so far he's raped me at least twenty-five times.'

 When he is doing horrible things to my body, I look at my mum's face [in a photograph]. I imagine her laughing... I look into her eyes and lose myself in her. And my mom and I get through it.'
Amanda Berry describing in her memoir being raped by Ariel Castro and how she made a makeshift frame of family photos to help her survive

She described how he slobbered on her face and was 'obsessed with my breasts' telling the teenager: 'These boobs are mine.'

Amanda wrote how she took pictures from her purse and stuck them using gum onto part of cereal box, carefully ripped into a frame. 

'When he is doing horrible things to my body, I look at my mum's face. I imagine her laughing....I look into her eyes and lose myself in her. And my mom and I get through it.' 

Amanda described the psychological tricks that Castro played on her, pretending that he had called her mom and allowing her to listen to voicemails from her desperately worried family.

At one point, he allows her to read an article in the local newspaper, the Plain Dealer, where her mom spoke of her worry.

Amanda then recalled of Castro's reaction: 'It turns him on to see how much it hurts me to read the article.' 

The memoir describes the survival techniques Amanda adopts to stay alive: 'Don't fight. Don't make him mad.'

She recalls the pain she feels from the daily rapes. '[He] is making me lie on my stomach while he does that really nasty thing again. It hurts so bad... I can't help so I scream ''Let me go home or kill me!''' 

Castro then pulled a vacuum cleaner into the filthy bedroom and began tightening the cord around her neck, tighter and tighter. 

'''I'm not here to kill you,'' he shouts. ''I don't want to kill you! This is just about my sexual problem.'''

A third of the way into Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland, Gina DeJesus' diary entries begin, explaining how she was tricked by Castro, a friend of her father, to entering his home to help him move a speaker.

He raped Gina a month after she had been at the home. She wrote: 'Now that he's started raping me, he can't stop.'

During many of the rapes, he forces her to tell him that she 'loves it' - and when she refuses 'make it hurt more'. Often, she is raped while in chains. 

Michelle Knight, now 34, had already been held captive by Castro for around a year at his dilapidated Ohio home when Amanda was taken. 

Gina wrote that he raped Michelle in front of her.

'He climbs on Michelle, and I roll away and try not to watch. I can't stop crying. Then it's my turn.' 

Despite the appalling circumstances, both women told GMA they never gave up the will to escape in a new interview, aired on Monday. 

They said: 'Now we want the world to know, we survived. We love life. We were stronger than Ariel Castro.'

Amanda, 29, recalled the day she was kidnapped on April 21, 2003, after accepting a ride from Castro, a friend's father, as she walked home from her job at Burger King. 

She said: 'One ride can change your whole life.He started showing me around the house. And I never got back out.'   

Amanda watched her mother beg for her to come home on TV as she sat chained in a house close to the very neighborhood where she had disappeared. 

Amanda recalled how she felt watching her family's desperate pleas. 

'That kept me going,' she said. 'And I said, I'm going to make it home to you, as long as you fight, I'm going to fight.' 

She has also revealed the British royal wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William offered her a glimmer of hope during her decade-long ordeal at the hands of her captor Ariel Castro.

In an interview with Newsnight, she described how she enjoyed watching the news during her time in Castro's house, and the impending royal wedding in April 2011 was highly anticipated across all the networks.

She said: 'To me... It's happiness. They're getting married. To see what her dress looked like and see all the people there, it was just beautiful.

'I still one day want to get married and have a family, that normalcy.'

Gina, 25, told GMA: 'I tried to run but he sat on my back and I just start kicking him. I kicked him and I bruised him really bad.' 

Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus recalled the years of rapes, torture and psychological games in their new book.

An FBI investigator told GMA that doors were used to cover the windows, turning areas of the home into a fortress. The doors were bolted to the wall - and then those bolts were sheared off.

Despite the misery of their lives, often chained, starved and sexually abused, the women found comfort in the birth of Amanda's baby girl by Castro in 2006.

Amanda described the moment that she first laid eyes on her baby, Jocelyn.

'It was amazing,' she said. 'She was so quiet and she was just the most beautiful thing.' 

She explained how she tried to shield Jocelyn from the horrors of their lives by creating a kindergarten in the one-room prison where Castro held them.

Evidence pictures revealed a cramped room with no natural light but the walls decorated with colorful drawings and a pink Barbie desk set up next to a bed with a neat row of soft toys. 

Castro relented and bought school supplies at Amanda's request.  

The mom even dreamed up a 'walk to school' for her daughter each morning when she had turned five.

Amanda said: 'We would pretend - leave our house, all of us in the same room of course. 

'I would tell her, ''okay, we're at a street now, so you have to stop. Then you look both ways for cars and then we can go across the street. Okay, we're at school now.''

'I'd sit her at her little desk and tell her, ''okay you have a good day at school now. Mommy will be back later for you.''' 

Amanda, then acting as teacher, would recite the Pledge of Allegiance with the little girl. 

Amanda Berry, pictured following her escape from Ariel Castro's 'house of horrors' with her sister (left) and daughter Jocelyn (right) in 2013

Amanda Berry, pictured following her escape from Ariel Castro's 'house of horrors' with her sister (left) and daughter Jocelyn (right) in 2013. The survivor has described in her new memoir, how her daughter gave her the strength to go on during the harrowing ten-year ordeal

Amanda Berry created schoolwork for her daughter to give the child a sense of normalcy during their harrowing existence

Amanda Berry created schoolwork for her daughter to give the child a sense of normalcy during their harrowing existence

Jocelyn had a pink Barbie desk and a crown in the cramped and dark room she shared with her mother 

Jocelyn had a pink Barbie desk and a crown in the cramped and dark room she shared with her mother 

Finally on May 6, 2013, Amanda said it was her daughter who noticed that the women were alone in the house.

She recalled that her daughter told her 'mom, daddy's car is gone'.

Amanda knew that this was her opportunity to break free. 

'My heart immediately started pounding. Should I chance it? If I'm going to do it, I need to do it now.' 

On May 6, Amanda grabbed her daughter and bolted for the front door, kicking her way out through a bottom panel.

A full interview with Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus with Robin Roberts on ABC's 20/20 will air on Tuesday night. 

In an excerpt, published in People magazine last week, Amanda revealed how she believed that her daughter was an 'angel' sent to her by her mother, who died without ever knowing that happened to her.  

She recalled how she had learned from TV news that her mother died of a heart attack, aged 43, in March 2006, while she was 'chained like a dog' in Castro's home.      

The broken front door of the house on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland Ohio where Amanda Berry kicked her way to freedom on May 6, 2013, more than a decade after she went missing 

The broken front door of the house on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland Ohio where Amanda Berry kicked her way to freedom on May 6, 2013, more than a decade after she went missing 

Amanda Berry (pictured left as a teen) along with Gina DeJesus (right) and Michelle Knight were held captive in Ariel Castro's Cleveland, Ohio home for 10 years

A month after learning that her mother, Louwana Miller, had died, Amanda, realized she was pregnant by Castro in April 2006. Although initially elated, she worried how Castro would react.

Amanda wrote: 'I think my mom sent me this baby. It's her way of giving me an angel. But I worry about what he's going to do. 

'Michelle told me that he beat her to make her miscarry. Will he let me carry my baby?'

As the pregnant teen mourned her mother alone amid harrowing torture and abuse, she recalled how she made video tapes of news reports of her mom at vigils and watched them repeatedly.

The Cleveland 'house of horrors' survivors wrote a book that was published on April 27

The Cleveland 'house of horrors' survivors have written a book, being published on April 27

Amanda wrote in the memoir: 'I would rewind and hear her voice. I feel like she's definitely here with me now.'

On Christmas Day, she gave birth in her prison of a home to daughter, Jocelyn, with the help of Michelle.

Castro appeared delighted to have a new daughter, Amanda wrote. She recalled: 'When the baby started kicking, I reached for his hand and placed it on my stomach. 

'I knew the baby would be safer if he was excited about being a new father.'

Castro told her that they were 'a family'.

The predator took the little girl, whom he called Pretty, to church and out to play while her mother remained in chains.

Castro finally took the chains off the three women when Jocelyn started to notice them, even though Amanda tried to protect her daughter by telling her that they were only bracelets.

Amanda described her confusion at feeling some warmth towards Castro when he treated their daughter well.  

She wrote: 'I know it's wrong but I feel closer to him. I appreciate that he treats Jocelyn so well and buys her clothes and toys. 

'I desperately want Jocelyn to have a normal life. On the days that he helps me do that, I actually feel some affection for him. I'm so confused. 

'How can he be good one minute and so cruel the next?' 

Castro pleaded guilty in July 2013 to 937 counts including two charges of aggravated murder related to one act of forcing one of his victims to miscarry.

The 53-year-old was sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus 1,000 years in August 2013. He hanged himself in his prison cell less than a month into his sentence.  

Amanda and Gina revealed in their memoir, written with Washington Post journalists Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, how their captor would play mind games and try to turn them against each other.

However they began to establish bonds as they struggled through their darkest hours.

Neither Amanda or Gina is currently in touch with fellow survivor Michelle Knight.

In People Magazine, Gina said: 'I think we all did like each other at one point but then [Ariel} played us against each other so we couldn't trust people.' 

Amanda added that the difficulty of their situation was something that only the three women could understand and she wished Michelle the best for the future.

The mother said that she was focused on moving forward in life and concentrating on doing the best for her now eight-year-old daughter. 

Gina, who is studying for her high school diploma, dreams of owning her own business. 

And both women said what they have been through left them happy, simply for being able to have regular lives, surrounded by their families.

In chains: Ariel Castro killed himself in prison in September 2013 after being sentenced to life in prison plus 1,000 years for abducting the three women

In chains: Ariel Castro killed himself in prison in September 2013 after being sentenced to life in prison plus 1,000 years for abducting the three women and holding them captive in his Ohio home

https://gma.yahoo.com/video/cleveland-kidnapping-survivors-never-lost-115636408.html


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